Florida requires drivers to hand over personal info — which it then sells

By David McElroy · July 22, 2011

If a private company had the right to legally force you to turn over personal information about yourself and then it sold that information to other companies, any state attorney general would be camped out in front of that company’s door holding a news conference about the legal action he’s taking against the company. But if it’s the state itself doing that, well, it’s OK. The rules are different for Big Brother than they are for us.

In Florida — as in every state — you’re required to hand over various information about yourself if you’d like to drive or own a car (or do just about anything). Now it turns out that the state is selling the information that it forces people to hand over. According to a Miami TV station’s report, the state is selling people’s names, addresses, dates of birth and lists of the vehicles they drive.

The state is selling this information to companies such as Lexus Nexus and Shadow Soft, which resell that information to other companies. But the state says it requires those companies to sign documents saying that they won’t harass people. That’s comforting, isn’t it?

The state made $63 million last year selling such information, so it’s not exactly pocket change. The information must be worth quite a bit to the people who are buying it — and they wouldn’t be buying it unless it was going to make money for them, would they?

If people choose to do business with a company that sells information about them, I don’t have a problem with that, as long as it’s disclosed, because that’s a choice. But when the state requires that you hand over personal information about yourself and then discloses it to pretty much anybody who wants to buy it — even if it’s through a third-party information broker — that’s wrong.

With many of the things the state does, we’re told that it’s to protect us. Licensing drivers and collecting personal information about auto ownership is done is the name of safety and crime prevention. It’s not. It’s about control. The idea that the state system cares about you is a fantasy. Just because it’s what you were told in your middle school civics class doesn’t make it so.

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

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